Isbjørn

Artist: Pentagram
Album: Relentless
Year: 1985*
Chronological position: Debut album
Genre: Traditional doom metal

The albums selected in the metal album club, which now has four people, are intended to be reviewed in the "Chunks of metal" section, but since this is a doom metal album, and I also have a section exclusively for doom metal, I thought I'd include it here, since it makes no difference whatsoever.

Up until now, I'd never heard any pure, traditional doom metal. I'd heard Witchfinder General and Black Sabbath, but they're more proto-doom, and I'd heard Candlemass, but they play so-called “epic doom”. Therefore I expected this to be very slow, boring and kind of bland. That turned out to be wrong. It was a lot slower than Sabbath and Witchfinder General, and didn't have the epic, mighty sound of Candlemass, but it had some great, heavy riffs and good solos, as well as an alright vocalist. That's all I need. I liked every song, but I can't give this a five out of five rating, since I prefer the sound of Candlemass, by far.

4/5

*Originally released in 1985 as Pentagram, re-issued in 1993 as Relentless, featuring different cover art and a different tracklisting

__________________